Comic Books and Asian-American Identity: Comicon Hits New York

For my costume-required 18th birthday party, I dressed up as my long-time fictional hero, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I donned the prerequisite blonde wig, maroon pleather jacket and accessorized with a wooden stake, er, spatula. I was recognized…by no one.

I look back at the party with a mixture of wounded pride and shame. I suppose I could have dressed up as Chun-Li from Street Fighter or a character from “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” like some friends did. But am I only supposed to identify with “Asian” characters because I’m Asian-American? To learn more, I recently sat down with Jeff Yang, editor-in-chief of the graphic novel collection “Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology,” and co-chair of the first-ever Asian American Comicon, an all-day event being held tomorrow at the Museum of Chinese in America.

Like “Secret Identities,” the comic convention will showcase a vast array of Asian and Asian American writers and artists in the comic book industry — such as GI Joe writer Larry Hama, Wonder Woman artist Bernard Chang and Incredible Hulk writer Greg Pak — while also engaging in conversations such as the representation — or under representation — of Asians in the stories they largely create. Yang spoke to us about why Asian-American teens don’t identify with Asian heroes in comic books and how to remedy that without feeling “inorganic.”

Wall Street Journal: Who are the major and most interesting Asian-American characters in comic books? Because I don’t know of any. Is Jubilee from the X-Men series considered Asian?

Jeff Yang: Jubilee is Asian; you can tell she’s Asian because her power is to make fireworks. It’s sort of typical of Asian-American or minority comic book heroes — that their powers have to somehow spring from their ethnicity in some bizarre fashion. They know martial arts, they can do fireworks, they have the ability to calculate mathematical problems at lightning speed. Heroes with powers like that are almost by definition ensemble characters or sidekicks. The heroes who become iconic are the ones for whom their story and their rationale is larger than just a one-line elevator pitch. You’re not just going to be a Fortune Cookie Boy, or Riceman.

How do you incorporate characters of Asian-American descent — or any other race other than white or black — in comic books without forcing it down people’s throats?

Well it’s kind of the same answer for any medium, not just comic books. The difference is that comic books are infinitely adaptable as a form. One of the things that Greg Pak — co-chair of the convention and probably one of the leading Asian-American voices from the writerly perspective in comics today — says, is that when done properly, a hero’s identity, whether ethnic, sexually orientated, gender, whatever, is additive. It’s an organic part of where they come from; it’s why their origin is interesting. He talks about Magneto [from the "X-Men" series]. People know that Magneto’s history is that he came out of the concentration camps, he was a Holocaust survivor and that his Jewish identity and his survivor sensibility is part of why he’s such a Mutant-first supremacist, right? He’s decided that humanity can’t be salvaged and that it’s sort of “homosuperior” that needs to, ironically, survive. It’s almost like by surviving the Nazis, he’s become a Nazi himself.

So it’s creating that depth, rather than slapping on –

It’s creating depth and creating an authentic reason why that character’s identity plays into the character he has become. It’s a set of experiences, it’s a storyline, it’s a background, it’s a context, it’s ancestry. All these things are part of what makes any character — comic book or otherwise — interesting.

So are you looking for a hero, are you just looking for just more depth?

I would say just more depth. We don’t need all characters to just be heroic. I think villains can be interesting and deep and great story drivers as well. Magneto is a villain but he’s, again, a theatrical villain with a deep and incredibly rich mine of potential stories around where he came from and who he is. But right now we don’t have heroes. The best known Asians, or Asian Americans in comics, tend to be villains. Word is that the main villain in “Iron Man 2″ is going to be the Mandarin.

Asians as villains are not uncommon. Asians as heroes? Much less so. It would be great to see characters of any type, villains or heroes, that have that sort of richness and depth and organic quality. But it wouldn’t hurt to start with some heroes.

Hence a convention dedicated to Asian-American Comics?

It’s not simply about talking to our own community, or doing this backyard celebration in our neighborhood. It’s about acknowledging that in this particular form, you’re seeing the reality of multiculturalism and globalization happen faster than virtually any other medium. It’s a place where both in front of the scenes, and behind the scenes, enormous changes have occurred and there’s an even a greater capacity for change down the line. And yet people have, by and large, failed to really sit down and explore what that means for the industry and for its consumers. We think that AACC is going to take that first step in doing that.

About Speakeasy

Speakeasy is a blog covering media, entertainment, celebrity and the arts. The publication is produced by Barbara Chai and Jonathan Welsh with contributions from the Wall Street Journal staff and others. Write to us at speakeasy@wsj.com or follow us on Twitter at @WSJSpeakeasy or individually @barbarachai.